Zatera Ul

For OLC’s birthday, I made her some dolls and things for her dollhouse. Lots of fun, but tiring. I wired the dolls so they are posable. This is the procedure, in case you were wondering, which is mostly based on the old Family Creative Workshop craft encyclopedia’s instructions:

Make a simple doll pattern out of paper–straight arms and legs, round head. Trace pattern onto top of a double layer of fabric, with wrong sides out. Sew doll outline, except for under arms and head. (Leave a big gap under at least one arm, for turning the doll right side out.) Cut close to stitching and turn doll right side out (which is the hardest step in the whole process). I pushed from inside with a small stick, and pulled from outside with my fingernails. Do wiring: one wire for legs, use pliers to curl up ends of wire to keep it from poking out. Another wire for arms, plus a bit attached for the neck. Wrap all wires with one-inch strips of muslin to further help keep them from poking through. Insert wires into doll body, legs first. Finish stuffing with bits of cotton pulled from cotton balls, pushed in with a small stick. Sew up sides and head, and any parts that got a little too strained when turned right side out. Draw on face and add hair of some sort. Make a simple outfit from scrap fabric. I made crude, but removable clothing, so she can sew doll clothes for them when she’s older.

I am also working on some cloth and leather soft-soled shoes for her. She wears them off and on, although they are only half-finished.

We got out to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum last weekend in time to see some of the fall colors. The grove of maples, with the leaves all turned golden yellow, was especially glorious. We got ourselves an arboretum membership as an anniversary present. It’s our secret plan to learn all about plants and figure out which ones we want to plant at our future house. It’s also homeschooling in a way; my high school biology teacher was awesome for zoology, but weak on botany.

TLG is determined to learn to walk before he turns seven months old. He has the strength of a ten-month-old, but the balance of a six-month-old. His new thing is that he pulls himself up by grabbing onto my pants, so I can’t just walk away from him. He hasn’t been napping all that well lately, but still stays up late and wakes up early, and MFH has been working long days all week, so I am pretty much tired all the time.

It doesn’t help that OLC has gotten in the habit of coming by and hyena-laughing every time I’m trying to nurse TLG to sleep.

I’m looking forward to voting in the school board elections next week. One of the candidates made an interesting statement about preparing children for the information-based economy, instead of one based on manufacturing. I’m trying to decide whether I think he’s in favor of actually teaching independent and critical thinking in school, or if he’s trying to make a case for injecting even more technology into the classrooms and not worrying so much about the three Rs and that sort of thing.